How-To Geek

If you're over six feet tall or have a larger frame, you've probably noticed that most office chairs weren't designed with you in mind. Seats and armrests that press into your legs and sides, and headrests that sit at shoulder height, aren't minor inconveniences. Over a full working day, they add discomfort.

AI chatbots are incredibly useful for my work. I use them for research, for proofreading and fact-checking, and for keeping track of articles and pitches. There's one job I had really hoped AI could take off my hands. Sadly, both Claude and ChatGPT failed dismally.

If there’s one thing that I’ve found to be consistently true, it’s that even the tiniest bit of friction can make something useless. That’s why I was so happy when I noticed a simple toggle appear on my Android Auto screen after a drive with Google Maps navigation.

I can't imagine my life without USB-C at this point. There's lots to love about this widespread connector standard. For the most part, I can plug any two things with USB ports or cables into each other, and something useful will happen.

Summer road-trip season is almost here, and that usually means one thing: more time at the gas pump. For SUV buyers, finding something practical that won't drain your fuel budget has become more important than ever.

Most people treat Excel as a rigid calculator, completely missing its capacity for chaos. Excel's built-in randomization tools can generate numbers, shuffle existing lists, and build mock timelines in seconds—yet almost no one takes advantage of them. Here's how they work in practice.

VPNs aren't the most exciting things to self-host, but once I started using one on a Raspberry Pi, it quickly became indispensable. It is lightweight, efficient, and gives me reliable access to all of my self-hosted services.

Open Source software may make the world go round, but if you've been using open source apps for as long as I have you'll know that these software packages are wonderfully functional, but not particularly refined.

Microsoft is giving its mainstream Surface devices their first big updates in two years, and they promise to be worthwhile updates from older Windows portables — if you're willing to embrace ARM instead of an Intel machine. The new Surface Laptop 13.8-inch, Surface Laptop 15-inch, and Surface Pro 13-inch (aka Surface Laptop 8 and Surface Pro 12) all have much speedier Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips alongside a few other major upgrades.

When I buy a smart home device, it tends to be for a specific purpose. I bought a presence sensor in order to keep the lights on when I'm in a room, which motion sensors struggle with. It took me quite some time to realize that my presence sensors had a very useful extra feature I wasn't using, and many other smart home devices have hidden secondary functions.

SUVs have become the default choice for a huge number of buyers, but finding one that delivers genuine value is getting harder as prices continue to climb. Fortunately, you don't have to spend luxury-car money to get a vehicle that is comfortable, practical, efficient, and packed with modern technology. In fact, there are plenty of standout options available for less than $40,000.

I'm a huge Waze fan and have been using it for over 10 years. It's completely replaced Google Maps when I'm driving or using Android Auto, but that doesn't mean I uninstalled the app. I still keep Google Maps around for a few key features, and that's because both apps are better when used together.

Plex has been popular with the self-hosting community for years because it is easy to set up, reliable, and polished enough to replace a streaming service without a ton of inconvenience. Unfortunately, its lifetime license is jumping from $250 to $750 on July 1st, 2026, and the self-hosting community is moving to the alternatives.

In May of this year, Google announced they would be launching an advanced search bar model, further integrating Gemini into Google's core functions and making the whole search engine experience reliant on AI — an overhaul Google users and internet surfers aren't thrilled about. So, with Google doing its best to kill the search bar completely, we've compiled a list of the best search engines you may want to use instead.

The Facebook Portal was an ambitious but ultimately flawed attempt for the social media giant to compete with Google and Amazon in the smart display space. Designed as a means of video calling, interacting with Alexa, and doing other tablet-related things, Meta discontinued the Portal in late 2022.

Once your network stops being a single flat LAN with a few friendly devices on it, guessing becomes a very poor way to debug anything. Between VLANs, containers, DNS filtering, self-hosted services, NAS traffic, random IoT chatter, and a few machines that always seem to be doing something in the background, the problem is rarely as simple as “the internet is slow.”

Now that Paramount+'s massive UFC event, which was broadcast live from the White House lawn Sunday night, is done and dusted, it's back to the streaming service's regularly scheduled programming, which, for this post, means movies, movies, movies. Luckily, there's still a lot to tap into for the rest of June, if you're looking for something good to watch this week.

The Toyota Prius arrived in the United States in 2000 and spent the next 25 years becoming the textbook definition of a hybrid car. It was the first mass-produced hybrid most Americans ever saw, and its name became synonymous with fuel efficiency in a way that no other car has matched.

Netflix can sometimes do a really great job at making you feel like there's nothing to watch, even though it has a cavernous library of movies and TV shows to keep you busy scrolling for a lifetime. Unless it's top of the Netflix charts or top of the streaming service's algorithmically-decided offerings—The Four Seasons, the Michael Jackson doc, and Office Romance are in everyone's face, currently—the problem was never too few options; it's finding the right ones.

Manufacturers are frequently reluctant to talk about camouflaged prototype cars, but not Ford. The Blue Oval has launched a 'hidden' website for its $30,000 electric pickup truck that offers a very early glimpse of the affordable EV.